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Ritu Menon

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Ritu Menon
Born1949 (age 76–77)
EducationMiranda House
Occupations
  • Publisher
  • writer
  • editor
  • journalist
  • biographer
  • women's rights activist
Years active1984–present
OrganizationInternational Alliance of Independent Publishers
Known forFeminist publishing
Notable work
  • Borders & Boundaries: Women in India's Partition
  • Out of Line: A Literary and Political Biography of Nayantara Sahgal
  • Zohra! A Biography in Four Acts
Title
MovementFeminism
SpouseA. G. Krishna Menon
AwardsPadma Shri (2011)

Ritu Menon is an Indian publisher, writer, editor, journalist, biographer, and women's rights activist.[1][2]

Early life and personal life

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Menon was born in 1949.[3] She attended Miranda House at the University of Delhi.[4] Menon is married to architect A. G. Krishna Menon, also known as "Pogey".[5]

Career

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In 1984, Menon co-founded Kali for Women, India's first exclusively feminist publishing house, along with Urvashi Butalia, her longtime collaborator. In 2003, Kali for Women shut shop due to lack of commercial viability compounded by irreconcilable personal differences between Menon and Butalia. Thereafter, Menon independently founded Women Unlimited, another feminist publishing house.[6]

She has also written numerous newspaper articles and op-eds. Her writing focuses on violence against women, religion's take on women and the gender divide across the society from a strongly feminist and left-wing perspective.[7]

Over a Zoom call, she talked about Address Book: A Publishing Memoir in the time of COVID, which she wrote during the pandemic without an explicit plan to publish a book. “It became a form of putting down what I was going through, remembering, thinking, reading, and worrying about,” she says (13 July 2021).[8]

Publications

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  • The Unfinished Business, Outlook, May 2001[9]
  • Anti-CAA protests by Muslim women are about where, how and why you belong, Indian Express, Feb 2020[10]
  • Borders & Boundaries: Women in India's Partition. 1998 (with Kamla Bhasin)[11]
  • No Woman's Land: Women from Pakistan, India & Bangladesh Write on the Partition of India. 2004
  • Unequal Citizens: A Study of Muslim Women in India. 2006 (with Zoya Hasan)[12]
  • From Mathura to Manorama: Resisting Violence Against Women in India. 2007 (with Kalpana Kannabiran)[13]
  • address book: a publishing memoir in the time of covid

Awards and honours

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In 2000-2001, she served on the International Advisory Board of the Raja Rao Award for Literature.[14] In 2011, Menon and Butalia were jointly conferred the Padma Shri, India's fourth-highest civilian award, by the Government of India.[15]

References

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  1. ↑ "Unlock Diaries: About being normal by Ritu Menon". Hindustan Times. 3 June 2020. Retrieved 16 January 2021.
  2. ↑ "Menon, Ritu". SAGE Publications Inc. 16 January 2021. Retrieved 16 January 2021.
  3. ↑ "Ritu Menon Partition Archive". Archives of Contemporary India. Ashoka University. Retrieved 17 August 2026.
  4. ↑ Hasan, Zoya (Winter 2007–Spring 2008). "A College of One's Own". India International Centre Quarterly. 34 (3/4): 208–221. JSTOR 23006342. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ↑ Kanjilal, Pratik (8 April 2017). "Woman on Wanderlust". The Indian Express. Retrieved 17 August 2026.
  6. ↑ Menon, Ritu (16 September 2020). "A publishing diary written during the pandemic: Ritu Menon's literary memories and encounters". Scroll.in. Retrieved 16 January 2021.
  7. ↑ "Ritu Menon". The Kennedy Center. Archived from the original on 14 July 2014. Retrieved 13 July 2013.
  8. ↑ "The Ritu Menon interview | 'Feminist publishing is a development activity. It is not just about producing books'". Firstpost. 13 July 2021. Retrieved 29 December 2021.
  9. ↑ "The Unfinished Business | Outlook India Magazine". magazine.outlookindia.com. Archived from the original on 22 January 2021. Retrieved 16 January 2021.
  10. ↑ "Anti-CAA protests by Muslim women are about where, how and why you belong". The Indian Express. 4 February 2020. Retrieved 16 January 2021.
  11. ↑ Menon, Ritu; Bhasin, Kamla (1998). Borders & Boundaries: Women in India's Partition. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-2552-5.
  12. ↑ Hasan, Zoya; Menon, Ritu (14 September 2006). Unequal Citizens: A Study of Muslim Women in India. OUP India. ISBN 978-0-19-568459-9.
  13. ↑ Kannabirān, Kalpana; Menon, Ritu (2007). From Mathura to Manorama: Resisting Violence Against Women in India. Women Unlimited. ISBN 978-81-88965-35-9.
  14. ↑ "Professional Notes" Archived 27 November 2019 at the Wayback Machine, World Englishes, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Wiley-Blackwell 2001), pp. 117–118.
  15. ↑ "Padma Awards Announced" (Press release). Ministry of Home Affairs. 25 January 2011. Retrieved 16 August 2013.
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